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Wednesday, 1 January 2014

Spellbound by a Sparkling Story!

Happy
New Year people! I’m still here – I haven’t gone anywhere, and I certainly
haven’t given up blogging. But I cannot believe I haven’t posted anything since
the middle of November, and I haven’t really got much of an explanation. I’ve
been trying to get ‘social media’ stuff up and running for Oxfam Lichfield, and
I’ve been focusing so hard on that, it seems to have squeezed everything else
out - I even wrote an Advent Alphabet, highlighting things in the shops and the charity's work. Here's the rhyme for 'H' on December 8.

For warmth when it's cold

Or shade in the Heat

A Hat on your Head

Makes an outfit complete.

And it was the anniversary of my Father’s death, which always gets me down, and then I don’t feel like doing much. And it there was the run-up to Christmas, and New Year, and my Mother has been to stay, and my Daughters visited, with their boyfriends, and I had a lovely time over Christmas, but The Book Trunk got a bit forgotten!

Now
it’s January 1, and I’m trying to organise myself for the year ahead… Back on
the diet, lots of walks planned, crochet and sewing to finish, lists to write –
you know the kind of thing. Anyway, Oxfam Lichfield’s Facebook page is doing
quite well after being ignored for ages because no-one had any time to do anything
with it. It’s generating ‘likes’ and a few comments, and almost runs itself. I
take photos, and write little bits, then schedule them to appear. Scheduling is
like magic I’ve decided, because you can do masses of stuff in advance, then
more or less forget about it all – I should use it more here, and it might stop
me getting behind! And I wish I could use it on Oxfam Lichfield Twitter, I’m
sure it would make life easier – when I’m stuck, then whatever the weather I
tell people it’s ideal weather for buying books! The weather can never be too
bad or too good for buying books – wouldn’t you agree?

And
I’ve set up a blog for our two Oxfam shops. It’s in what can only be described
as an embryonic stage, but I’ve got posts scheduled to appear, someone cleverer
than me is going to work on the design and, hopefully, it will gradually
acquire its own identity. So you can see, I really have been busy, and haven't been idling my time away.

Anyway,
this is supposed to be a book blog, so I shall stop wittering on about my
volunteering project, and enthuse about a book – Loitering with Intent, by Muriel
Spark. With the exception of The Mandelbaum Gate, which I wouldn’t read
again even if you paid me, I just love Spark’s novels, and this is one of her
best – way up there with my favourites, The Ballad of Peckham Rye, and The
Girls of Slender Means.

Spark
doesn’t do heroines – she doesn’t do heroes of villains either – but Fleur
Talbot is as near a heroine as you’ll find in Spark’s work. Fleur takes a
mysterious job as secretary to Sir Quentin Oliver, who is the director of the
Autobiographical Association, a very peculiar organisation whose idiosyncratic
(positively batty even) members are compiling their memoirs, but no-one has got
beyond the first chapter. They’re hampered by dodgy memories and lack of
talent, and it falls to Fleur to try and make sense of their efforts .

She
herself is writing a novel, Warrender Chase, which Sir Oliver steals, and
somehow life and fiction become strangely and inextricably mixed as things
Fleur believes she has created in her story actually happen, and it becomes
more and more difficult to tell what’s real, and what’s not, and you start to
wonder is Fleur a reliable witness to events – or is the whole mad, chaotic story
spun out of her imagination.

Actually,
Fleur reminds me a little of Pompey in Stevie Smith’s Novel on Yellow Paper – I
know I said you are unlikely to ever read anything quite like it, but I hadn’t
read this then, and quite apart from the fact that Pompey is writing a novel
while she works as a secretary for publisher, there is something in these
characters’ outlook on life, that is similar, and the way they stand back
observing things and people.

I
assume Fleur is based on Spark, and her thoughts on writing fiction and the
creative process are, presumably those of the author. As in much of her other
work, Spark raises issues about the nature of reality and fiction, belief in
God, immortal souls, love, death, truth and lies. None of the characters ever
quite connect with each other, and they all seem to have shaped their own
little worlds from their own realities, but none of the realities fit together –
and in any case does anyone ever know what truth really is. Loitering with
Intent is darkly funny, very witty, beautifully written in classic Sparkling
style, and held me spellbound from start to finish. How could anyone not like a
book which opens like this:

One day in
the middle of the twentieth century I sat in an old graveyard which had not yet
been demolished, in the Kensington area of London, when a young policeman
stepped off the path and came over to me.

And
if you think that sounds gentle, then beware, because Spark is never gentle,
and never safe. She’s wickedly funny, but she’s sharp and spiky and can be very
unsettling indeed as she probes below the surface of polite society and turns
the world upside down, and at the same time she poses those big questions about
life, the universe and everything.

Happy New Year! I read Loitering with Intent in 2013 as well - I loved the character of Sir Quentin's mother; she helped create that really uneasy blend of slapstick and darkness that made the book so attractive. I don't think I liked it as much as The Girls of Slender Means or Memento Mori, but I'm looking forward to reading more of her work - A Far Cry from Kensington will likely be next.

I love The Girls of Slender Means. When I read it I think it's my favourite, but when I read The Ballad of Peckham Rye I think that's my favourite! And A Far Cry from Kensington is excellent: I'm sure you will enjoy it. Spark opened up a whole new world of reading for me - up until then my reading had been mainly based on the classics and I suddenly discovered this woman who wrote in modern language, about modern people, with no heroes or villain, and no neat happy endings. She was witty and funny while raising all sorts of serious issues, and very subversive, which I loved - and I still feel the same way.